Jointly organised by The British Museum and The Courtauld Gothic Ivories Project, this event follows on from the successful 2012 conference Gothic Ivories: Old Questions New Directions (V&A-The Courtauld). Celebrating new research on Gothic ivory carving, papers will focus on a wide range of topics arising from the study of Gothic ivory carving and Embriachi pieces, related to the themes of content and context.

Online booking only: available from the British Museum website.

PROGRAMME

DAY 1
Saturday 5 July: The Courtauld Institute of Art, Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre

9.30 Registration (reception hall-Courtauld Institute)

10.00 Introduction John Lowden and Catherine Yvard, The Courtauld Institute of Art

10.15 Keynote Paul Williamson, Victoria and Albert Museum
‘They Who Only Ivories Know, Know not Ivories’: Polychrome and Other Micro-Carvings around 1400 in their Broader Context.

Session One: The Object and its History
Chair: Neil Stratford, Correspondant étranger de l’Institut, London

10.45 The Ivory Virgin and Child from the Martin Le Roy Collection
Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, Musée du Louvre, Paris and Juliette Levy-Hinstin, Conservator, Paris

11.05 A Happy End: The Group of the Descent of the Cross Reunited
Élisabeth Antoine-König, Musée du Louvre, Paris and Juliette Levy-Hinstin, Conservator, Paris

11.25 Looking Closely: What a 14th-Century Ivory has been Waiting to Tell Us
Lydia Chávez, University California Berkeley

11.45 Coffee break

Session Two: Ivories in Context: Sources and Uses
Chair: Sarah Guérin, Université de Montréal

12.15 I segni del potere. I Pastorali gotici in avorio per i Vescovi dell’Italia mediana
Ileana Tozzi, Museo Diocesano di Rieti

12.35 Buying, Gifting, Storing: Ivory Madonnas in Documentary Sources from Late Medieval Central Europe
Christian Nikolaus Opitz, University of Vienna

12.55 What’s in a Name: Peigniers, Tabletiers, and Late Flamboyant Parisian Ivory
Katherine Eve Baker, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris

13.15 - 14.30 Lunch

Session Three: Ivory Carving in the 16th century
Chair: Alexandra Suda, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

14.30 Reproductions Reproduced. Woodcut, Ivory and Terracotta
Ingmar Reesing, University of Amsterdam

14.50 Biting, Dripping, Screaming? Active Bone on a Medical Knife Handle
Jack Hartnell, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London

15.10 Anatomical Impulses in 16th-Century Memento Mori Ivories
Stephen Perkinson, Bowdoin College, Brunswick (Maine)

15.30 Refreshments

Session Four: Collecting in the 19th Century
Chair: Glyn Davies, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

16.00 Gothic Ivories in an Unknown Illustrated Catalogue of the Collection of Clément Wenceslas, Comte de Renesse-Breidbach (1776 - 1833)
Franz Kirchweger, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

16.20 Fictile Ivories: Diffusing the Taste for and Connoisseurship of Gothic Ivories
Benedetta Chiesi, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

16.40 William Maskell and his Network: a 19th-Century Case Study
Naomi Speakman, The British Museum, London

17.00 - 18.00 Reception

DAY 2
Sunday 6 July: The British Museum, Stevenson Lecture Theatre

9.30 Registration

10.00 Introduction Naomi Speakman, Curator of Late Medieval Collections, The British Museum

10.15 Keynote Michele Tomasi, Université de Lausanne
Why the Embriachi?

Session One: New Perspectives on Embriachi Carving
Chair: John Lowden, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London

10.45 When is a Workshop not a Workshop? Re-considering Embriachi Bone Carving
Glyn Davies, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

11.05 The Embriachi Collection of the Museum of Decorative Arts, Paris
Monique Blanc, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris

11.25 Coffee break

Session Two: Questions of Iconography
Chair: Chuck Little, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

11.55 The Son of Man Crowned in Thorns: Gothic Ivories and the Invention of Tradition in 13th-Century Paris
Emily Guerry, University of Oxford

12.15 A Workshop Reconstructed: Construction and Content
Sarah Guérin, Université de Montréal

12.35 Twin Plaques from the State Hermitage Museum and Budapest Museum of Applied Arts: an Iconographical Study
Marta J. Kryzhanovskaia, The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg

12.55 - 14.00 Lunch

Session Three: Relationships with Other Media
Chair: Paul Williamson, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

14.00 The Use of Gothic Ivories as a Basis for the Iconography of the Tomb of Lady Inês de Castro (Alcobaça Monastery-ca. 1358 -1362)
Carla Varela Fernandes, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Lisbon

14.20 Christ Crucified Between Two Thieves in the Wallace Collection London
Geoffrey Rampton, Independent Scholar, London

14.40 Ivory, Parchment, Paper: Ivory Sculpture and the Arts of the Book, 14th-16th Century
Catherine Yvard, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London

15.00 Refreshments

Session Four: Collectors and Ivories, 19th- 20th Centuries
Chair: Naomi Speakman, The British Museum, London

15.30 ‘Collected with Love and Care’: Gothic Ivory in the Neutelings Collection of Medieval Sculpture
Lars Hendrikman, Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht

15.50 Paul Thoby, MD.: a Constant Collector
Camille Broucke, Musée Dobrée, Nantes

16.10 De Aves Venando in Eburibus: Two 19th- or 20th-century Ivories Acquired by Sir William Burrell
Anisha Birk, The British Museum, London and Robert Gibbs, University of Glasgow

16.30 - 16.45 Concluding remarks